Spectral Domain (SD)-OCT provides real time images of surface and subsurface structures. In the eye, for example, OCT can be used to image the cornea, the iris, the crystalline lens and the retina. Typically, the subject being imaged is a cooperative adult patient having their head positioned in a chin-rest before imaging the eye. The imaging optics used are typically optimized for the human adult eye, and specifically for imaging of the anterior segment of the eye, i.e., the cornea to the iris, or the posterior pole of the eye, i.e., the retina. In conventional systems, these distinct portions of the eye require independent optical imaging systems, and generally cannot be imaged using the same optics. Furthermore, such systems are now commonly configured with an iris camera, a fundus camera, or a scanning laser opthalmoscope (SLO) or line scanning opthalmoscope (LSO), that provide high speed photographic views of the respective features of the eye to facilitate alignment of the OCT image, and a record of the location of the OCT image.
Not all subjects of interest are cooperative as the adult patient. Furthermore, not all subjects of interest have optical properties that are similar or equivalent to the adult eye, or are even scaled versions of the adult eye. For example, a rodent eye more closely approximates a spherical, or ball, lens. Imaging the retina of the rodent eye, for either fundus photography, SLO or LSO imaging, or OCT, typically requires objective optics specifically designed for these ball-lens systems. Rodents are in an important class of subjects for pre-clinical research that cannot be imaged in a typical clinical imaging appliance for many reasons. For example, most rodents do not cooperate with chin-rest alignment systems. Yet rodent imaging is very important for research in ophthalmology and in research of systemic disease processes that influence neurologic and vascular function. Rodents, for example, mice and rats, are very well suited models for evaluating biological function as wild-type, are well suited to genetic modification for evaluating specific genotypes and phenotypes, and provide excellent models for evaluating response to a wide variety of treatments. Accordingly, high resolution, high throughput imaging systems that provide the highest quality images of ocular structure in rodent models efficiently and reproducibly may be desired.